habitational name for someone who lived at the ‘old farmstead’, from Middle Low German olt, alt ‘old’ + hof ‘farmstead’, ‘manor farm’.
Westphalia, Germany is a region and former province of Prussia, W Germany. Münster was the capital of the province. After 1945 the province was incorporated into the West German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, now a state in reunified Germany. North Rhine-Westphalia is situated in the western part of Germany and shares borders with Belgium in the southwest and the Netherlands in the west and northwest. It has borders with the German states of Lower Saxony to the north and northeast, Rhineland-Palatinate to the south and Hesse to the southeast.
The region is drained by the Ems, Weser, Ruhr, and Lippe rivers; it is hilly in the east and south and forms a low plain in the northwest. The land consists partly of fertile soil and partly of sandy tracts, moors, and heaths. The Ruhr valley, in the west, is part of the great Westphalian coal basin and of the Ruhr district,
Information located on Ancestry.com / Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISGN 0-19-506137-4, Wikipedia.com, and Encyclopedia.com
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